harvest season in minority villages

Colorful tapestries, harvesting rice, morning cock crows and ancient songs floating over drum towers where old men sit playing mah jong. The ethnic minority villages of Guangxi Province offer much in the way of slow living - especially in contrast with the rapid industrialization of the home places of the rest of their Chinese brethren. These pastoral places seem to serve as refuge for city-dwelling Han Chinese; similarly to the romantics in turn-of-the-century continental Europe, you can find painters and poets and lovers of a slower life here in these villages, enjoying the clean air and the sweeping movements of the brightly-clad reapers, harvesting what they had sown many months previous.

In Ping'an, home of the Zhuang people, the rice fields are in the form of terraces cut into steep hillsides - referred to here as 'dragon's backbone.' Most of the time in Ping'an was spent hiking amongst these carved mountainsides, taking in the autumnal scent of burning dry leaves.

In Chengyang, a series of Dong towns clustered along a water-wheeled river, the main attractions are several flower (or, more practically, wind-and-rain) bridges. A leisurely stroll through the towns finds gaggles of schoolchildren giggling out hello's, narrow alleyways framed by nail-less Dong houses with drying bouquets of rice hanging from their eaves, and drum towers with friendly old men smoking pipes and offering weak green tea as a token of friendship and pride.

hipness in yangshuo

Yangshuo is the Moab, Utah or the Jackson, Wyoming of China. These gateway towns are hip, filled with dreadlocked climbers and their dirty backpacks, and are surrounded by gorgeous natural scenery. For the first two, the draw is Arches and Yellowstone, and here it is the Li and Yulong rivers and the karst peaks that jut out of the otherwise flat land of this southwestern province. For some, the sight of westerners at all in this fairly remote area of China is too much to bear; with their hideous visage of unkempt northface pants and designer hiking boots.  For others, including us, the sight of westerners only makes obvious what is inherent in many "remote" areas here, the effects of globalization - of America Brand consumerism and greed - are everywhere, and cannot be avoided.  Many purists say that Yangshuo is not the 'real China,' but I think they are looking for something that doesn't exist, and are actually offended to see some mainstream middle-aged American white couple making it to somewhere that was -up until then - making them feel radical and wildly adventurous.  Alex and I make no claims of grandeur and purity, so we can be okay with beautiful scenery, Heineken's and pizza for dinner, and American breakfast. So we did, and enjoyed ourselves.

One night, when enjoying some local beer at a great cafe with great music, we were approached by a 9 year old boy who asked us if he could practice his English with us.  Well, we were skeptical at first, reading about people who want to "practice English" by asking you to buy things. So, we asked him a few questions and he seemed legit, so we invited him to sit with us. We sat for the greater part of an hour discussing pokemon and American movies and his parents' jobs and how much he likes knowing English.  He gave us some (what he considered simple) 'math problems,' which were actually super Chinese-esque riddles for us to solve. Like, if you have 8 eggs, and one of them weighs more than all the other 7 separately, and each of those other 7 weigh the same, and you can only use the scale 2 times, how do you weigh the eggs (in any combination) to find out which one is the heaviest egg. Yeah, we failed to figure this one out.  In any case, this theme of adorable and earnest children has been repeating itself. I am once again taken aback by the joy of conversation, and once again (as in Morocco, Ecuador) it is with a child. They have less of a filter to guard against the wrong words, so they tell you exactly what they know. Like our friend Joe says, "Chinese video games are horrible."

colonialism in macau

More a colonial city than Hong Kong, Macau reveals its Portugese bloodline. Cobbled streets and richly decorated churches, words in arabic letters (albeit still hard to decipher) and people who look (more) like me, Macau gives me my last shot of The West -- of home -- before my long abstinence in The East. We spent time here wandering along the winding european alleyways and relaxing into churches, following our eurotrip model of finding sanctuary from our own feet in comfortable and often cool holy places. We ate Italian for the first (and not the last...I HOPE!) time, had Macanese (a mix of Portugese and Chinese) food and found a Portugese cafe with soft coconut pastries and caffe latte's in which they can be dunk. Oh, pleasure drome! Basta! Give me something hard, tough, strange, absurd, an assualt on my senses. Southern China, Li River, ethnic minority villiages, I'm coming.

fables in hong kong

After an arduous but surprisingly tolerable fourteen hour flight, we arrived -- for the very first time -- on the continent of Asia. We wobbled wearily toward our hotel, in Mirador Mansions, which were anything but the luxurious image that comes with the name. It is basically a series of buildings housing stores, exchange shops, tailors, apartments and guest houses. After a bombardment of neon lights and a maze of indians hawking "sunglasseshandbagswatchestailoredsuits," we made it into our fortress of solitude, complete with hot water, free wireless internet, powerful air conditioning and a flat screen tv now showing a David Attenborough nature documentary. ahhhhh. 

Our first nights were mostly sleepless, our bodies in a funk from the insane opposite-side-of-the-world-timechange, so our first couple of days we spent marching like zombies through the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong. We saw two movies (Body of Lies and Vicky Christina Barcelona), applied for our China visas, went to two museums, an English bookstore, and took the longest (1/2 mile) escalator in the world. 

The fourth day, however, after having adjusted our eating and sleeping, we journeyed into Kowloon's fabled markets. After popping off a quick and insanely cheap metro ride, we found the flower market. Teeming with flowers named and nameless (to me), we were overcome by the sheer sweetness of it all. Every perfect package of luscious buds was wrapped up in crisp and soft and pale paper, waiting to be delivered to blushing babes and gracious mothers. Then the bird garden -- a series of men fawning over their exotic bird-friends that I am not entirely sure they actually wanted to sell, for fear of parting with their best mates. It is rumored that the men hand feed each of their creatures crickets with chopsticks -- spoiled! but also worthy of the attention, these birds overwhelmed with their colors, shape, size and sometimes uncanny ability to talk back. After that, fish. Assuredly illegally garnered, there were tanks and tanks of water plants and anemones and coral and so many types of goldfish you didn't know existed, some of them so strangely resembling anime creatures that you would think they were designed by nintendo. oh, asia. Repititions of things, especially aesthetically pleasing things, has an uncanny way of making you feel overwhelmed but curious. Like a child running through a flock of grounded birds, you want to keep it all, to discover it, to feel it, to touch it. Oh! So many flowers and they smell so sweet and oh so bright and fresh and oh they can all be mine! and birdies! and fishies! I want to see them all close up, to hold them, to have them, forever. Come to asia, you'll know what I mean. 

on the road again

On the road again

goin places that I've never been

seein things that I may never see again

and I can't wait to get on the road again

Flying from Chicago, I touch down in Phoenix and as I step out of the plane I breathe in the heat. Exhausting and invasive but inspiring and motivating, travel draws the best from me like powdered sugar through a sieve.  There are little unconscious symbols that exist in Phoenix for me, signifying the beginning of something new: the bright sun on the white floor, the lights of planes burning like brighter stars in the desert sky, the palm tree against an endless blue. I went to visit my grandmother (Nan) and Uncle (Kurt) last time before I left for Europe, and returning again I feel safe, like this is my launching pad, and I'm ready to take off.

After a week of preparation for the journey ahead and relaxation for now, Nan and Uncle Kurt drove me up to Flagstaff where I was forced to face the worst part of leaving home: saying goodbye to the ones you love the most, and who love you, too. After some tears, and some fleeting thoughts of regret, Alex and his mom (Oksana) and I drove off to conquer to Colorado Plateau. 

We saw deep chasms and natural arches in fiery red (Grand Canyon, Arches, Zion), ancient cliff palaces (Mesa Verde), rock cities made of pink and salmon and tan hoodoos (Bryce Canyon), and ended with Alex's home place -- the enchanted forest in his backyard called Yosemite. 

So, here I am again. On the brink of something scary and new. And as hesitations begin to take over, I am reminded of the student speaker at my graduation, and I think this is the best time to include the entirety of his speech, because it has been a sort of maxim for me, post-graduation.

“Life. . . naturally pulls us down toward death.” 

Welcome to your graduation. As a product of a U of C education, I feel compelled to cite my sources, and so I’ll tell you that what I just said was a quotation from Anne Bogart, a renowned American theater director, who was paraphrasing writer Italo Calvino from one of six lectures he wrote but never finished. He didn’t finish them, because he died. Now Anne Bogart is not a U of C student and moreover, she’s an artist, so she isn’t required to cite anyone—for example, she fails to cite Rudolf Clausius. Who is Rudolf Clausius? He’s the German physicist who stated the second law of Thermodynamics. But it’s not like his idea was original—he was only revising Sadi Carnot’s theories, which were addressing advances made by James Watt, who was standing on the shoulders of Thomas Newcomen, who synthesized Thomas Savery and Denis Papin, and so forth, and so forth. Five hundred years of neglected citation, but I will not perpetuate such irresponsible scholarship—all of my information was taken from Wikipedia.

For example, Wikipedia tells me about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that since the Big Bang, entropy has been rising—which means that the energy of the universe has been dissipating and will continue to do so until it arrives at equilibrium, fatal and final. That event is otherwise known as the Great Heat-Death of the Universe. Now this will happen billions of years from now but you’re graduating today, and entering a world, as Anne Bogart conceives it, of dissipating human energy. For the rest of your life, you will get tired. You will shy away from risk. You will cathect to comfort. You will watch lots of television. It’s a gentle process, and it's completely unstoppable. We will lose energy. The universe will end. We can’t stop the Great Heat-Death of the Universe.

But by God, we are University of Chicago students. And we can fight.

How do you pick a fight with the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Anne Bogart, artist and abstainer from Chicago-style citation, argues that the act of creation is inherently an act of resistance against our own death. To fight entropy, I might add, is to have the audacity to act against the universe’s inclination to settle and our own impulse to simply live a comfortable life. This of course puts me in the mind of Plato’s allegory of the cave. The cave, we forget, is a really cozy place to be. It’s warm, there’s a big long couch—there’s even a sweet television and all your friends are there watching it. But the cave is part of a universe that yearns for stagnation, and so here at the U of C we leave it. It’s uncomfortable and even painful but it takes a damn good shot at entropy. If we’ve learned one lesson from Plato, it’s that discomfort is often a sure sign of something worthwhile. We take up discomfort, we take up the fight because to fight entropy is to transcend our own fate and the single most important thing we can do as human beings is to confront the Great Heat-Death of the Universe and to defy it. For four years, you've been doing just that—talking, writing, collaborating, creating—fighting entropy 10 weeks at a time. Today you decide—do you go back to the cave? Or do you stay outside and fight?

Life naturally pulls us down toward death, but today you graduate; and today, entropy meets the University of Chicago. This is your graduation. This is your fight. 

Asia, here I come.

yearning for the unfathomable

Looking through this journal of my journeys, I re-read my post from right before I left Chicago last time.  I was looking to reconnect to my old self, to answer some questions. Is the feeling the same? Was I ready? Was it the right thing to do? Did I learn? 

My former self did not offer much self-revelation, only prescient and perfect advice:

For my part, Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. 

After days and days of social engagements, goodbyes and hellos, hugging many children who probably won't remember my name and some who won't forget it, amid tears and laughter, I was feeling a little emotionally drained. It is difficult to go away, to leave all that is stable and known and safe. This is not an easy decision and it is one that comes with the tremendous responsibility of making time away from loved ones worthwhile. I recognize this. 

But I cannot wait, as Stevenson regails, to move my feet. To listen to tropical rainstorms and take beautiful pictures, to see unchanged asian hilltribes and to sample french cuisine shaded by palm trees, and all of the most fantastical experiences I could not begin to fathom yet. 

extraordinary machine

united states
chicago
england
london
morocco
marrakech
essouiera
fes
chefchouen
algerciras
spain
ronda
granada
sevilla
cordoba
madrid
barcelona
france
nice
monaco
monte-carlo
italy
vernazza
florence
venice
rome
greece
athens
turkey
istanbul
romania
brasov
hungary
budapest
austria
vienna
germany
munich
czech republic
prague
germany
berlin
sweden
stockholm
denmark
copenhagen
netherlands
amsterdam
belgium
brussels
france
paris
chartres
ireland
dublin
kilkenny
kells
cork
england
london
united states
chicago

if there was a better way to go then it would find me
i can't help that the road just rolls out behind me
be kind to me or treat me mean
i'll make the most of it i'm an extraordinary machine
--fiona apple. extraordinary machine

next is vietnam (hanoi) to teach english. and visiting china, laos thailand, burma, cambodia. then off to new zealand for a few months after that to work and stay and eat on organic farms (WWOOF). and, hopefully, the year after that in africa (tanzania, please!) with a fulbright or thorugh the peace corps. and the year after that in south america (argentina and brazil, yes!) teaching english and learning spanish. i can't help that the road just rolls out behind me.

holy spaces in ireland

As the airborne seeds dance in the wind like tiny glowing fairies, I sit in the ruined kells priory. We ambled along Irish countryside to get to kells from kilkenny. We hitchhiked, picked up by the sweetest old lady whose car was overflowing with fresh flowers from the market. As we sat among the blossoms she told us of her village, kells, the new 'uncharacteristic' real estate, and of her famous race horse. She let us off near the stream and told us to go along the river, around the old mill and it'll be just beyond that. wow. when's the last time you've gotten directions like that?

We ambled along the clearest creek I've ever seen, lined with fresh spring buds. It was the kind of creek I imagine you'd dip into on a hot summer day, swirling between the water lilies and swans and drinking it straight anytime you got thirsty. The grass was crisp and bright and green, the dew drops slipped onto our toes as we passed along it. We came upon the old mill, still operating, and just beyond it stood the castle-like towers of the ruined monastery. Erected in the dark ages, monks used to walk these halls, pray in this chapel and think about God, life, and existence.

Within the walls is a large rolling meadow with dozens of sheep and lambs scattered upon it. The babies are experiencing their first spring, tumbling on their new awkwardly long legs and mowing the grass like adorable puffy white lawnmowers. I sat under a flowering tree and watched them play, sit, drink milk from their mother. I felt like a milk maiden, hiding from my duties to take in the beauty and warmth of the new spring sun. My long hair blew in the wind and the sun shone lightly on my back, warming me.

And now I sit here, in this ruined place of worship. The arches of what were walls and windows are being flooded with the afternoon sunlight and I can imagine how human beings could devote their lives to learning and meditation and worship in a place like this.

Alas, the monks eventually left this place and the rocks they assembled into walls and holy spaces are slowly returning to their place in the earth. The tombs are eroding, turning into rocks and then sand and then soil. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. A verse from the bible that these monks might not have known well enough.

on Proust and travel in Paris

A prompt in a contemporary french newspaper: a scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people... what would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm?

Proust: I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies it - our life - hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn't happen this time, we won't miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Mrs. X, or making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn't happen, we don't do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn't have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

*an excerpt found in a book on Proust in an english bookstore in Paris

we are humans. finite but far-reaching creatures, we assume our lives will go on forever and as this assumption lies burning in our subconscious, we deaden inside, losing the desire to think and feel deeply, to explore and to love. Travel is the conscious acknowledgement of my finite-ness, the fact that everyday that I live I am one day closer to my death and it oughtn't take a perceived catastrophe to confront this truth. I must constantly move my feet on this trip, move my body through the world, and I am aware of my life's lack of routine and knowing always of my decision to be here now.

By behaving this way I fall into the anti-routine, a place where the catastrophe of death becomes more conscious, and I explore my place in my life on a daily basis. I know almost every hour of every day of this past two months that I am young and I am seeing the beauty and intellect of Europe, of western history, while politics and economics allow it. And I, like Proust, must work to retain this awareness throughout my life - through routine and change, happiness and trauma, good and bad - I must live this day as if it were my last, and to beware of the endlessness and risk of the unconscious routinized life of which Proust speaks.

resurgence of wonder in paris

This post may make you nervous, but dont worry, mom, its totally safe.

In Stockholm, Amsterdam and Paris Alex and I couchsurfed. What does this mean? you ask. well, it means that we meet up with a total stranger and stay on their couch or extra bed. In exchange, we make our couch available to people when we are not traveling. It was only a tiny bit scary at first; but after the first 5 minutes, when you get a sense that the person is not crazy, it immediately becomes rewarding. Not only do you get to save money, but you get to exchange ideas, make new friends, and learn about the world through the people in it.

In Stockholm it was Andreas. Slightly gothic, befitting the Scandinavian youth stereotype, and very much into the Smashing Pumpkins, he was such a friendly fellow. We all talked late into the night about swedish socialism and american capitalism, and all of the politics that make them work. He told us of his free education (up to college), no health care bills, and his government funded job making educational television on Swedens public access channel. Oh, how I wish I were Swedish!

Then, in Amsterdam, we met Robb, a cal tech postdoc working on particle physics. We talked about LAs music scene, the presidential race, and we acquired a scientists insight on the energy crisis. Oh! and he took us out for a Dutch beer with his German girlfriend.

Finally, Gabriela and Angel in Paris. They are Brazilian students (sociology and journalism, respectively) earning their phds with an exchange year in france. From them we learned about the life of the Sao Paolo working class, the effects of multinational corporations on south americans, and how they hope for change in our country as it will bring change in theirs.

I am radicalized by the ease and beauty with which these people have opened their lives and homes to us. Nearing the end of our journey, I am feeling a resurgence of love and wonder in the world and the people it contains.

clean beauty in stockholm and joy in amsterdam

From Prague we moved on forward to Berlin, or so we thought. We got into Berlin, saw the wall, the place where Hitler shot himself, and then realized Alex forgot his retainer in Prague. Oh, lord. Okay, so risk his teeth shifting and then having to find a dentist to get another retainer molded OR spend the next day that we were supposed to spend in Berlin going back to Prague. We chose the latter. Kind of absurd to be reliant on a strange molded plastic mechanism, isnt it? So, 5 hours back to Prague then another 5 hours returning again to Berlin and then a 2 hour break and then a night train to Malmo, Sweden and then a 15 minute break and a 5 hour train to Stockholm. Whew!

Luckily, train travel is super not stressful and we had our night cabin to ourselves and it was mostly pleasant for having to go that far for that long. Stockholm was beautiful. Clean, neat, happy. The land looked to me like northern wisconsin -- which is probably why a lot of swedes ended up there -- filled with red barns and flat land, lots of glimmering lakes among forests of thin pine trees. I felt like I fit in there. Lots of tall beautiful blondes, not what i am exactly, but sort of how I see Lindsey. Alas, it turns out that in very well run countries with not much sightseeing you'd rather dream of living there than be a tourist there. So, we cut out a day of Stockholm and headed to Amsterdam via Copenhagen.

Just in the short while we have been here the experience has been filled with wonder and awe. Bikes everywhere! Barely any cars only buses and trams and bikes and people fill the streets. The canals are rife with young and beautiful large dutch people, rowing their boats and their newly-browning skin glowing in the afternoon sunlight. When we tried to get on the bus the driver said it was free today (i think informally because no other native amsterdammers knew about this), and everyone was in such high spirits about this spontaneous phenomena that they kept filling with laughter everytime someone else got on the bus and received the pleasant news from our jovial captain. To top it off, he picked up his microphone and told the bus he was thinking of Louis Armstrong's famous song and began to sing "the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people on the BUS, i see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do, they're really saying I LOVE YOU -- I love you, I love each and everyone one of you, my bus riders." And as I look over past all the faces just beaming with glee in unabashed and unironic happiness, a little girl who looks like a younger version of myself and is also dressed up like a priness smiles at me as the setting sun shines behind her head and illuminates her golden hair, throwing a halo around her angelic face. Then I look out the window behind her and see the famous statue that proclaims I AMSTERDAM. This can't be real.

bureaucracy in prague

So, now I know what Kafka was talking about. The bureaucracy of eastern europe, namely the former communist countries, is outrageous!

Alex and I had just gotten into Prague. We were excited. We were happy, ready to see the gem of central europe. After a few poorly marked signs and hard to find ATMs we made our way onto the metro. We bought a 90 minute ticket, or so we thought. We waited around at our hostel for a ridiculously long check-in procedure with some Thai students in front of us in line and then finally got our room and headed out to the city. We finally got back on the metro to go into the historical district and as we slipped off into the crowd two burly slavic men stood at the bottom of the escalator, checking tickets. Ours was 30 minutes less than valid. Not knowing this, I took our tickets out of my back pocket and presented them with confidence. He pointed to the clock, the 75 minutes on the ticket, took us to the posters that explained his badges and the penalty that was about to be forced upon us. A whirlwind of both disbelief and clarity ensued.

There was no way out, we were about to get fined, and I cannot believe it was over such a small thing as this. shit shit shit. ugh. no! 90 dollars. A days' budget. Bureaucracy. The men seemed to get a sick pleasure from walking us over to the atms, holding our American passports. Getting thieved by bureaucratic thugs is somehow more rewarding than getting robbed by the poor. They aren't desperate, they don't need the money, they are just doing their vicious jobs and holding us accountable to their flawed system.

radical politics in Dachau

note: this post may or may not be filled with radical politics. if you are offended by radical politics, please stop here.

Today I went to a concentration camp five miles outside of Munich called Dachau.

Nothing can prepare one for the experience of visiting a concentration camp. nothing. no books or films or songs or pictures can capture seeing their barracks, prisons, torture rooms. I cannot describe to you the insights gained. I had thoughts of man's nature, the universality of brotherly love, and of mass complacency, the power of man post-industrial revolution, the ease with which indoctrination happened and happens. still today. with you even. My comprehension is still very fuzzy, but I know the outlines of the story and to me it is scarier than any tales of ghosts and demons and vampires.

People who are suffering become easily swayed, and most people follow the masses. Hitler took advantage of these two facts and once he gained the slightest majority (his party won by only a few percentage points), he granted himself supreme power and made laws as he saw fit.

Now, I don't know about you (here comes the radical part), but I see this happening still today. The Chinese are blocking the press and starting 're-education' for monks about the situation in Tibet. Chavez is trying to become dictator for life. Our president used American suffering to launch a war that had no basis in reality, and then our military tortured people there, and we are detaining prisoners without a right to a trial.

All it takes is a bit more widespread suffering (maybe the looming economic crisis on the horizon?), and a bit more rightist leader and we are on our way to another third Reich.

What makes me particularly angry about all of this is that the Right then is the same as the Right now. They have the same stances, almost identical. And everyone can stand back and denounce the holocaust as if it were some anomaly of history. But its not. It was people who were conservative as we find conservatives today getting too much power (not that the far left wasn't as bad, wanting to use violence to incite revolution, but they were always too split to gain a clear majority).

I just want you to be aware of this. See the suffering and understand its causes, look into your own nature and recognize the tendencies to hate, and also those to love. Try to trend towards the latter.

depressing romania and spectacular budapest

Romania's reputation for being one of the most depressing places on earth is well deserved. So, so well deserved. I didn't know about this at first and I got myself all psyched up about the idea of going to Transylvania to the point that I stuck my head out of our train window in the black night to freak myself out a little. I imagined being a slavic peasant and being afraid of these dark wildernesses that surrounded my village and making up stories of vampires and such. (Dracula did, in fact, exist. In the form of Vlad the Impaler whose father was Dracul and he, in turn, Dracula meaning son of the Dragon. But he wasnt a vampiure, just a cruel dictator).

But then I actually arrived in Brasov. No buses were running and three taxi drivers stood outside the station with a gleaming look in their eye, like they were ready to con. The distance to town was too far to walk, so we were forced to deal with these sleazy men. They tried to charge us exorbitant amounts of money and called us all sorts of Romanian curses when we refused. Ugh. The worst of people. We ended up paying and cursing from the back seat.

The morning made the town seem slightly better, but not much. The skies were grey, the town deserted, everything we tried to see or do was closed up or moved away or just never existed. Needless to say, I would not recommend Romania.

Yet, as much as Romania was bad Budapest was spec-tac-u-lar, amazing, fantastic. 18th century baroque architecture everywhere, city parks, beautiful statues, blue skies, cheap prices, friendly people, good food and Hungarian baths heated by underground hot springs! Oh, and tall people! I am beginning to find the places of my ancestors. Not quite yet, but I am getting there. Off to Austria, where I might be getting even warmer.

the guises of istanbul

Ahhhh, Stambul! The eastern Rome, the center of the byzantine empire, where gilded christian mosaics meet flavored smoke meets bare feet on mosque carpets and turkish tea rolls around on your tongue. As you make your way around the modern-rome-esque cobblestone streets you'll find a new amalgamation of east and west around every turn. Wooden victorian houses and lush and manicured city gardens, centuries-old churches-turned-mosques-turned-museums and underground cisterns holding nourishment for this vast expanse of people that has been called many names: Constantinople, Byzantium, Istanbul. A metropolis with many guises, now removing its masks for the world to explore in its modern form.

Oh, and did we explore. This morning we had a breakfast overlooking the blue mosque on our rooftop terrace, then to the Aya Sofya with its uncovered golden mosaics. We wandered into a few other mosques (oh, how I love the plush carpet between my toes!), one with particularly beautiful and expensive islamic tiling. Then through the grand bazaar, which was less authentic and localized then Morocco's souqs, but interesting nonetheless. Then we went underground into a huge ancient cistern, complete with fish in the water and atmospheric lighting and music. We then went to our new favorite restaurant DoyDoy ('fill up! fill up!') and finally to a super local and legitimate hookah bar where we drank mint tea and smoked orange-flavored tobacco and played backgammon looking out onto the blue bosphorus and the up into the chilly night sky of the east.

ah, stambul.

murdered expectations in athens

So, Athens is sort of the murderer of our expectations and alex and i are its cunning little accomplices. I'll explain.

We came to Athens with pretty low expectations. We know its dirty, there is terrible air pollution, most of its ruins have been plundered over the centuries, it was in the middle of an extreme heat wave for this time of year. We knew all of this. Yet, we knew that were still nice neighborhoods and at least there's the acropolis and the parthenon and Socrates once lived here and democracy was born here, right?

Well, the major turning point in murdering these expectations came this morning when I put on my sweatshirt to head out for the day and a cockroach fell out onto the floor. yeah. But, let me back up, before that there were countless mosquito bites through the night, 'free' internet at our hostel on computers that dont load any pages, air pollution so bad it makes your throat hurt, a metro line built over where socrates gave his most famous apology (!!!!!!!!!!!!), scaffolding on the only building on the acropolis worth looking at - that parthenon, and heat so hot that walking makes sweat burst from your every pore.

As for Alex and I being accomplices: I chose the dingy hotel with pickpockets and prostitutes outside, and he chose to stay here two days. We tried desperately to change these two facts, running to the train station this morning to change our tickets, trying 2 days ago to change hotels, but athens slammed down our expectations like hulk hogan in his best years.

Nevertheless, at our lowest of lows, coming down from the acropolis with sweat in our eyes and disdain in our hearts, we began to love again. We saw some poppies on the way down and went into the agora, found a reconstructed stoa, shade and relaxation, famous sites not completely ruined and way less crowds. We found a wonderful greek restaurant with food you just wouldnt believe. Stuffed tomatoes and lamb with pasta and spinach rice and greek beer and cucumber and tomato salad, yummmm. Then we retired back to our hostel, but in a different room this time with (hopefully) less cockroaches. ::fingers crossed::

fortuitous circumstances in ostia

On my second to last day in Rome, Alex and I took a train out to what is now ostensibly the suburbs to what was then an ancient port town, Ostia Antica. We ambled around this poor-man's pompeii, exploring through the ruins like the lost boys in their treehouses and forts. After the capital fell, the arms of roman power began to wither away. This port town slowly crumbled with time and elements, leaving outlines of walls and grass for floors. We found what was the equivalent of the pantheon in this town, a circular and domed temple, and sat there to rest. This place of once grand importance, sitting directly across the via from the senate house and the forum baths, now had long grasses and spring flowers growing untended at its altar. We laid on the soft earth, under the clear and bright italian sky, and closed our eyes. The sun warmed our skin and the lightest breeze kept us from getting too warm. I couldn't help but think that all of the sacrifices done on this spot had motivated the gods to give us such fortuitous circumstances.

It was an entirely new way to understand Rome, and in a way allowed me to be at peace with trying to recreate my experience studying abroad here.

releasing nostalgia in rome

When Romulus defeated his brother Remus and founded this all-male city along the Tiber river, he created the love of my life. After a series of attempts to find a legitimately priced place to stay, and subsequently realizing that I have an amazing room for the price, I began to feel home here again. As soon as my eurostar pulled into termini, I wanted to rush to my old haunts: trastevere, campo de fiori, largo argentina and the pantheon, the ghetto and the villa bassi, but I soon realized that I am not studying abroad here anymore. I am here and older and wiser and in a different situation this time, creating new memories, a new Rome. The first day Alex and I wandered around the centro storico and ended up at trajans column, the site at which he presented and knew so much that I fell in love with his intelligence and confidence (i know, gag), and there happened to be an Americans for Obama in Italy rally. I know, right? So, I stuck around, listened to a historian from the American Academy in Rome compare Obama to Trajan (gasp!), and some Chicago jazz singers belt out some tunes across the Piazza Venezia, into the bluest roman afternoon sky, and I felt my homes and my associations collide. Chicago and Obama, Rome and Travel, Politics and Alex and Jazz singers from the south side. Only Rome can make magic like this.

As I wander through this city, its different this time. I let my old associations with places be inserted into my experiences, but I am less naive this time, less aghast at the wonder and glory and constantly changing beauty of Rome. I am confident here and blazing a new trail towards a future, and hopefully before my time here is through I will be able to release the nostalgia and be in the moment, breathing in the scent of the cyprus trees among monuments to the long dead but not forgotten.

grandeur in venezia

So, venice is great. Neptune, or whomever the venetians and their grandiosity deems responsible for rain, cannot stop the helpless beauty and destruction that is venice. They may create frescoes and personify every city and steal the bones of important saints (st mark as the lion with wings?), but building a city on water takes gumption, and these venetians, they have it. Really, they were just forced by atilla and turks onto this lagoon as these conquerors kept trying to invade, but it turned out to be a pretty sweet place to live. I mean, if you would rather use a boat than a car to get around (who wouldnt?), then this is your place.

Prego, on top of all of this... today alex and i found a store that will fill up your water bottle with wine for 2 euro per liter. Thats one euro for filling up my water bottle with the sweet sweet fruits of the grape. Oh, italy. How I adore you.

Nevertheless, we did take an hours worth of ferrys to get to an island that we deemed too rainy to walk around on and turned back around. However, after that water-into-wine experience, a too large pizza for a not so large price, and then watching the lights of the night dance on the black liquid, i am converted into a true worshiper - like tintoretto - of the venetians. Its not rome. Oh, no. It will never be rome. And, as the band the mountain goats put it:

I'm going to get myself in fighting trim,
scope out every angle of unfair advantage.
I'm going to bribe the officials.
I'm going to kill all the judges.
it's going to take you people years to recover from all of the damage.

our mother has been absent ever since we founded rome.
but there's going to be a party when the wolf comes home.

on politics

So, we are going to be in italy for their parliamentary elections on april 13th and 14th. The italians have a man named berlusconi running against a guy called veltroni. berlousconi is like what you would think of rupert murdoch running for president, and veltroni has likened himself to our wonderkinz, obama. even adopting his little chant in the form of "si puo fare," or - yes we can.

i have been wearing an obama pin around europe thus far (except when i was sick for a while and didnt want to strike up conversations) and i have gotten so much positivity from people. from older american rich liberal women in line at the alhambra to bartenders at 150 year old taverns in madrid to bookshop keepers in florence who talk about the amount of books obama is selling abroad to young italian boys who love to yell "yeah, obama" to look cool and educated to the girls they are with. it is quite amazing to me how much american culture and politics is known throughout the world, and i think this is something we, as americans, take for granted. we still set the pace. our mcdonalds and our video games as well as our political leaders are known and a part of quotidian for people across the world. my self-loathing as an ugly american tourist is starting to overturn more and more with every response i get to my pin. every smile or prolonged glance makes me feel privileged and aware, but cautious. i am not proud of american idol being exported into the minds of young people across europe. (alex and i watched the french version - nouvelle star - and the cheesiness and the sheer amounts of cuts and camera angles literally made it physically difficult to watch). so it is a careful line i toe, knowing the ugliness that america brings, but the hope that brings us together.

the mediterranean coast

nice was nice, not very nice, just nice. we got there in the evening and everything was lit up in the glow of neon, which is always a bit shady looking. the beach is really just black stones, not sand, but i think the europeans will take what they can get as far as beaches go. the water, though, was as blue as any i had ever seen. we decided to take a day trip from nice to monaco and see this little ritzy nation, that of princess grace kelly. it was also nice, but somewhere where the only way to get your foot into any worthwhile door is to have billions (or maybe just millions) of dollars in a bank account under your name. so, we just climbed around in their gardens and tried to go to their aquarium, found out that they wont accept our student ids unless they said 2008 on them, and then we refused to pay 12.50 euro each (!) for entrance. Overall, the french coast is just not for budget travellers.

Well, neither is the italian coast, but its a bit better and more necessary to see. After nice we hopped on multiple painstakingly slow regional trains (6 hours to go 120 miles) to get to vernazza, rick steves favorite of the cinque terre towns. it was home to me. the peaches and pinks and salmons of the walls stacked on top of one another and the sheer rock cliffs. the house wine and the pasta and pizza and the frutta di mare. oh, italy! the first day we sat around, savored our first italian meal and relaxed. the second day we took a train to the furthest town away and planned to hike back to our town, vernazza. the sun was at our backs, the water was sparkling like a moonless northern sky and the towns sat atop their hilltop homes like proud soldiers on the lookout. after we got back we made ourselves some prosciutto sandwiches and laid out on our patio, overlooking the sea on the opposite side of the town. lying there, the sun laid atop my closed eyes, making me see pink, and the wind kissed my cheeks and i heard the waves crash stories down below. i met an older lady there, a former travel writer for all the major us and canadian newspapers, who told me to follow my bliss and i will find work that i love. she said it is not a moment of epiphany that finds it for you, only a slow construction of a lifestyle, and then you find your work on the front page of the la times and you know this is where you want your life to be. well, lady, i hope im as lucky as you were. but it was great advice, and i am just beginning to understand this statement - follow your bliss - and my understanding is coming through moments like these.

overall, the coast was too expensive for us, but well worth things seen and done. and italy has my heart, sorry france.

mystery in the mezquita

walking in a trance in the continued movement of my feet on the ground, i imagined a type of prayer that didnt rely on looking skywards. it inhabits the earth, looking to your own senses for enlightenment.

the mezquita in granada was built for this kind of prayer. in an unprecedented design, this mosque was built in an expanse of horizontal space, not vertical. the plethora of arches overhead meant to simulate the dizzy shadows of desert trees, the garden an oasis. it was meant to bring attention to its inhabitants life on earth, the use of your own body in space to create prayer.

so, i walked the halls of the mezquita (what wasnt ruined by its later christian inhabitants), and prayed and listened to the sound of my own feet taking me across space, felt the soft wind on my cheeks from my movement and through this horizontal movement i transcended my place in space and time and if only for a moment i found god in those endless halls.

sacrifice in sevilla

easter sunday was sevilla´s bullrings´ opening night of the season, so alex and i coughed up 55 euro each to catch this spectacle of spectacles.

aaaaand nothing spells class like raising an animal to be violent and then slowly killing them while wearing sparkly suits in front of a crowd of jeering plebeians. but this is the classiness that is a corrida de torros, here in the oldest of bullrings in sevilla, spain. first, all of the participants in the fights come out in a procession to greet the dignintaries that sit at one end of the ring. there are 6 fights, 6 bulls, 3 matadors with 3 peones and 3 banderilleros and 2 picadors each, 2 bulls for each group of men. First, the peones come out with pink and yellow capes, and get the bull good and ready to charge, training it to follow the moves of the cloth. then, the horns of the band sound and out come the picadors, men on heavily shielded and blindfolded horses who land the first blow on the bull. the bull charges them, and they stab it with a long pointy rod from their lofty position. usually the bull writhes around a bit, trying to defend itself against what it must think the horse has done, and the horse is just moved around by the bull and acts befuddled.

then, the banderilleros come out, these are men with a set of spears with frilly decorations on them, and they have no capes. the hold the spears to get the bulls attention and then the bull charges them, and they have the stick the spears into its side, where they usually stay, hanging on by the flesh of the pierced animal. i think this is the most dangerous role in the group, because these men have no capes to hide behind or to make them look bigger, they are alone with the bull and their spears.

finally, when the bull is largely weakened, the matador comes out and does the usual posturing, having the bull run circles around him using his cape with the crowd crying ole at every successful attempt. finally, after the bull has been tired out, the matador gets his sword and lands the find blow to the bull, deep into its flesh.

the ensuing minutes are the very very worst of the match. the peones come back out and wave their capes in front of the dying bull in its last minutes of life. it tries to charge, but has lost all of its energy by the constant attacks by this batch of bullies. it is the saddest for me, like a group of scavengers, huddling over this near-dead animal, waiting for it to fall to its knees and for their matador to gain glory. bleeding from its side and out of its mouth, the animal falls onto its front knees and then onto its side, breathing its last in front of the cheering crowd.

if the matador has pleased the crowd enough, everyone holds up their handkerchiefs, and he is awarded the bull´s ear, a prized gift.

to me, this show is barbaric, but one that i am glad that i witnessed. i felt part of the tradition of man overcoming beast for the joy of the masses that has its roots in places from rodeos to the Colosseum.

that was my easter sunday. but im sure the lying around and eating ham you did was cool, too.